Fireworks
by i.amazonian
Summary: Beautiful, explosive, captivating. Fireworks in the night sky can make even the most brilliant of men forget for a moment, the warmth of the gentle flame awaiting them faithfully at home.
1. Chapter 1

**Fireworks**

* * *

Beautiful, explosive, captivating. Fireworks in the night sky can make even the most brilliant of men forget for a moment, the warmth of the gentle flame awaiting them faithfully at home.

* * *

_A touch. A pulse. Long seductive eyelashes._

* * *

He hadn't heard his phone ring like _that_ in quite a while. Two years, in fact, encompassing a fall, a mission, a return and a wedding. His wife is still an hour away from the end of her shift. It had been a particularly uneventful day, that is, until a woman's moan reverberates throughout his home.

* * *

_The Woman. Extraordinary. Their eyes lock and there are sparks._

* * *

He's almost afraid to read the message, but he really and truly loves his wife that he gains the confidence to do so. After all, he had managed to turn down dinner when he was still single, what more now that he had already vowed his heart to the one he loves? _She might have a case for me…_, he reasons with himself.

Two years without a word from each other, and yet I'm sure you'll be reading this. Let's have dinner. –IA

* * *

_Her pupils dilate and so do his. In her eyes, a challenge. No, a longing._

* * *

He's almost relieved. It's just the same old dinner invitation. All he has to do is what he used to: ignore it. So why can't he put the phone down? Another moan.

You're doubting yourself. You never doubt yourself. You know where I am. Dinner is waiting. –IA

He looks around the flat, wondering if she could see him. She deduced him, partially at least, without even seeing him. Incredible woman, his blood starts to ignite, just a tiny bit. _The_ woman.

* * *

_She stands up, wearing an exact replica of his robe, turning around. He knows where she's going._

* * *

No one will know. Secret dinners are the most enticing, I think you'll agree. –IA

The moans start filling his ears. His mind starts wondering what other sounds she can make.

Let's have dinner. –IA

* * *

_He follows her. He knows he shouldn't, but he does._

* * *

Dinner is waiting. –IA

* * *

_They find themselves inside the most beautiful bedroom he's ever seen, dangerously near the most inviting bed he's ever encountered._

* * *

I am waiting. –IA

The blood rushes down to a place only his wife has ever touched. The thought of Molly gives him some breathing space.

* * *

_She faces him, untying the robe as she walks closer. She sheds it and she is bare. The room just got even more beautiful, the bed even more difficult to resist._

* * *

Two years without seeing each other and still you're contemplating my request. That alone will tell you just how much you want dinner, Mr. Holmes. –IA

She's right. The damned woman is right.

* * *

_He can feel her breath right in front of his face. Wordlessly, she takes his hand, lifting it and spreading his palm around her ample breast. His breath hitches, and yet he feels powerless to take his hand away. Their eyes are locked once again._

* * *

He has his coat and scarf on before he notices it.

* * *

_She removes everything from him. His coat, his suit, his shirt. His hand is still on her breast. His pants, his underwear go off next. Without even looking, she wraps her long fingers around his manhood, and his brain goes haywire. Her eyes are smirking at him, ("Already hard? My deduction was right. You do want dinner."), and oh yes, he wants this._

* * *

Let's have dinner. –IA

He's already out the door.

* * *

_She starts stroking, and he can't help the groan that escapes his lips._

"_Kiss me, Mr. Holmes."_

_Hesitation. She senses it, and she stops her hand. He almost whimpers._

"_Kiss me. I can deliver. You _know_ that. Kiss me."_

_His ring glimmers from the hand that's holding her breast. For once in his life, he doesn't notice. He leans in and she starts stroking again. He starts squeezing and the first of her moans come. He feels a guilty sense of triumph at the sound._

"_Kiss me…" she whispers._

_He leans in even more, his brain and his body both having given in and are now eager for everything The Woman can offer. His heart, unnoticed as usual, breaks in the background._

_Their lips touch, and it starts out exactly how their acquaintanceship started. Explosive, seductive, consuming. Fireworks._

* * *

Molly Holmes decides to walk the way home, having received a text from her husband that he's going out for a case.

* * *

_They fall onto the bed, the perfect match. Their mutual sounds of pleasure fill the room, just as it unknowingly sucks the joy out of his life._

* * *

There are fireworks in the sky and Molly smile. _How beautiful..._, she thinks. She's never been very intuitive.

* * *

Note: The author had broken her own heart writing this. Or whatever heart she may have. She had written this two months ago on a plane, but it had been too hard reading it that she had to delay typing it on the computer. Suffice to say, one of things the author can not tolerate at all is adultery.


	2. Chapter 2

**Fireworks**

* * *

Beautiful, explosive, captivating. Fireworks in the night sky can make even the most brilliant of men forget for a moment, the warmth of the gentle flame awaiting them faithfully at home.

* * *

It's two in the morning and they're lying there, both completely spent. The Woman feels empowered; he feels disgustingly weakened. She lays her head on his chest, idly running her perfectly manicured nail up and down his side. She can feel his pulse slowly come down from the high, and she smiles, unusually gentler than her usual smirks. "You had three courses. How was dinner?"

He doesn't answer. It's true. She took him first, her dominatrix persona shining through as she rode him. It took her taking him in her mouth to reawaken him after he had exploded, and he pulled her up by her hair, turning her around and taking her from behind, roughly, animalistically, holding nothing back. They collapsed on the bed afterwards both panting so hard that the brightest, wittiest minds on the planet can barely think. She had been doing what she's doing now, when he felt the stirrings in his gut transfer to his loins again and he took her once more, that time slowly, almost like the cool-down to an explosive show.

They end up here, in this position, her head on his chest, her hand on his side, her contented sighs on his skin. His arms lie awkwardly by his sides, and he wonders why he _can't _hold her. Why he can't kiss her on the top of her head, or stroke her hair, or smile and squeeze her body lovingly.

Then, like the cold does after the breathtaking adrenaline of a pyrotechnics display fades, it _hits_ him. Hard.

He feels cold, _so cold_, and he sits right up, drawing a confused yelp from the woman beside him. "I have to go home now."

She frowns. He's leaving? _She's _the one who throws the men out, not the other way around. "It's 2 o'clock. Your wife is asleep, and knowing you, you would've sent her a vague text about having a case before coming here. _No one _will be suspicious."

"That is not why I want to go home." His voice is emotionless, trying to contain the pain that's starting to make itself known to him. "It's cold. I want to go home."

She tries to pull him back down. "I can warm you up again."

_No _is the first thing that his brain and his heart tell him in unison all night. _No you can't. _His thoughts fly to his wife, his light, his _Molly_, and the cold intensifies. She must be sleeping, in their bed, worried for his safety, having fallen asleep to the choices for breakfast tomorrow morning. She's there, being herself, being Molly, being warm. A longing erupts inside of him, so much so that it's gut-wrenchingly painful. Not only for his wife, his biggest happiness… but also for the strength to have said no when he read The Woman's texts earlier. It's done, he can't go back in time, the chance to say no and stay faithful gone the second he walked out the door.

He panics, his heart stopping. He's longing for the chance to opt to remain faithful to the one he loves, and it's completely gone. He's longing for his wife as well… will he lose her too?

_No!,_ his soul shouts to him. _Not her…_

The conscience, the thing he locked up in the basement of his mind palace before Molly and John came into his life and little by little let it back out, almost laughs cruelly at him. _Should've thought of the warmth you need before you poured cold water over the fire._

His brain, his heart, his soul all argue back at his conscience, just as he's putting on his clothes as quickly as is humanly possible. Too preoccupied with his inner turmoil that he doesn't notice The Woman's words, or the fleeting looks of pain on her face. No, he's too busy siding with the three things inside him that's fighting for his side.

He walks out of her lavish home, the cold stinging air outside actually making him feel _warmer_. Warmer than he felt _inside_ The Woman's house, in her bedroom, in her arms.

_I love Molly. She loves me. Molly loves me. She won't leave…, _the heart pleads.

_She made a vow. She said forever. She won't leave.,_ the brain reasons.

_I can fix this. It's a mistake, I can fix this. I will make it up to her. I have to. She won't leave…, _his soul, his freezing, desperate soul offers.

The conscience is undeterred, determined to be heard after being completely ignored for so long.

_You love her, and yet you went willingly to another woman's sinful, criminal embrace. You made a vow as well, remember? You broke it, what makes you think she can't? She deserves that choice._

It feels like his conscience has taken the tiny bit of life-affirming warmth left guarded by his soul and is now mercilessly stomping on its dying embers.

_I don't think you can make up for this. You've _killed_ her. Her fire for you will be dead and you will not be able to start it back up. Whatever kindling you have can never make her burn for you again._

He feels like a walking corpse that had escaped from his wife's morgue. His body cold, his soul lifeless. Somehow, he wishes he were a corpse. Molly _cares_ for her bodies, after all.

* * *

Note: The author is finding it extremely hard to write more and more for this story. She can only try and imagine what it'd be like to be in Molly's place, and it's almost cruel that she's putting a beloved character in such a position.


	3. Chapter 3

**Fireworks**

* * *

Beautiful, explosive, captivating. Fireworks in the night sky can make even the most brilliant of men forget for a moment, the warmth of the gentle flame awaiting them faithfully at home.

* * *

The welcoming embrace of their home overwhelms him as he enters quietly through the front door, so overwhelming that he has to fight the urge to cry. Every step he takes inside their home makes his heart feel comforted, but a look to their living room fireplace causes his gut to clench and fall into what he could only describe as despair.

_Despair, because the warmth is bound to end soon._

He walks up the stairs and his ridiculously sharp hearing catches his wife's soft snoring from their bedroom across the hall. Even such a simple thing invokes _love_ in him, but the pain that follows is incomparable. The pain of imagining what it'd be like to walk into their room at night and not find her there. The thought cripples him.

He walks straight past their bedroom, not even peeking in. He will not allow himself to lay eyes on her pure, beautiful form, not while The Woman's imposing scent is still on him. Flashes of what happened earlier cloud his mind again, and he all but runs to the guest bedroom's bathroom.

He sheds his clothes and he barely makes it to the shower stall before he succumbs to his urges once again, and starts stroking himself. It all comes back to him: The way she bit him, her nails scratching him, her breasts bouncing enticingly as she moves up and down his manhood. Her smooth back, the way she arched when he grabbed her hips and entered her from behind, the way she clenched around him when his fingers perched on her throbbing pearl.

He finds his arousal's paramount when he recalls the challenging way she texted him, the challenging way she seduced him, the challenging way she _deduced_ him. His hand moves faster and faster, his groans filling the shower room just as the steam does, and he's close, _he's so close…_

The word _Woman_ is just about to erupt from his lips when, through his haze, through the grunts he's making and through the water's noise, he hears it. He hears _Molly. _Her soft snore. All the way from the bedroom across the hall…?

His brain is pretty sure he's imagining it, but his heart doesn't seem to care. It's there, the sound, repeatedly blocking out the Woman's text alert from his mind palace. He hears her sigh his name in her sleep, once again an illusion of his own heart, and he starts to idly wonder as his hand slow down its pace. Did the Woman scream, sigh, moan, or at least _say_ his name during their… during dinner? He's sure she did. Sherlock, Mr. Holmes, probably even detective.

He has no recollection of it.

He wonders why he doesn't care.

His hand continues, but this time… his mind is filled by his wife's sighs. The look in her eyes when she's turned on, and the look in her eyes after they've both been satiated. The scar on the left side of her torso. The way she chuckles when he kisses along her ribcage. The way he worries if he had hurt her in the times when he can't help but be rough, and the way she smiles and ensures him that she loved it. The way her chest rises and falls and he's reminded that she's alive, and breathing, and there. With him.

The way she says she loves him. The way he honestly says the words back.

He explodes.

He sits there, on the floor against the shower room wall, panting from his release. It hadn't been intense, or urgent, or wild like his peaks with the Woman, but he feels… better. More complete.

_Happier._

For some reason, his two releases that had been courtesy of the Woman, _he doesn't even count the last one, the first two at least satisfied his body, the last one almost disgusts him_, had only left him with physical satiation, and a sense of triumph that she had found him as attractive as he did, her. His body wanted more sex, not necessarily more sex with her, and his brain hadn't been challenged by the act itself.

Almost as if… he didn't really care if he was pleasuring her or not. She pleasured him, and whether she was pleasured in return… he couldn't be bothered to bother himself with that.

His heart had crumbled, his spirits dampened, his soul lost. And it's _cold, so very cold._

* * *

Note: What else is there to say? In such a troubled time of her life, the author wonders why she'd keep writing something that would break her even more. The readers' reviews make it a bit easier, though, and the author's gratitude is soaring.


	4. Chapter 4

**Fireworks**

* * *

Beautiful, explosive, captivating. Fireworks in the night sky can make even the most brilliant of men forget for a moment, the warmth of the gentle flame awaiting them faithfully at home.

* * *

_Fireworks displays, or the fireworks themselves, are fleeting. One big, incomparable, impressive explosion of colors and sparks that rise higher than all the world, the spectator is captivated, enchanted, lost in its beauty… and then it's over. Another firework may follow, and then another, and then another, and the pupils dilate in their magnificence and the heart beats faster in excitement… and then the show is over. The fireworks are no longer in the sky, disintegrated in the atmosphere, and the audience will marvel and be in awe of it for a while but then it's time to go back to their lives. The fireworks are fleeting, and after the adrenaline tapers off, the cold hits, and if you linger for too long the nauseating smell of smoke and chemicals fills your lungs._

_It's not really a fault, certainly nothing wrong with a magnificent fireworks display, and hardly anything does compare to the mighty, unreachable magic of a firework. But it's hard to imagine watching fireworks for more than an hour or two at a time._

_Then everyone rushes inside to warm themselves by the fire._

* * *

He scrubs himself so much that his skin turns pink and raw, but it gives him the tiniest bit of comfort. He dries himself off, dresses in some pants and a dressing gown, and then he goes straight to their bedroom. He stops at the doorway, just watching his wife and a fresh batch of sentiment comes over him. He almost smiles, but his conscience stares down into his soul and that crippling pain, the gripping fear is back.

He takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the troubling previews his mind is playing, previews of a crying Molly, a Molly walking out the door. A life without Molly.

It's cold, so cold, _it's freezing_, and he wants to warm up by the fire now. He needs to.

He climbs into bed beside her and immediately his heart is home, his brain is relaxed and organized and his soul finds strength. He wraps his arms around his wife and his conscience wags a finger at him. Like so often in his life, he ignores it, tightening his hold on Molly.

She stirs. "Mmm… Sherlock?" she mumbles, feeling the presence of her husband behind her.

"Yes. Go back to sleep."

She turns in his arms, appreciating his warmth and burying her head against his chest to feel his heartbeat. Sighing in contentment, she presses herself to him more. His hand automatically goes to her hair, as if stroking it is the most natural thing for him to do. It is. "It's late. Hard case?"

The scent that fills his nose when he inhales is so… _welcoming_ and it's as if the metaphorical smoke is being cleared from his nasal passage. "Yes. Quite tricky. It's _done _now." He states it with an odd sense of finality, and had Molly not been half-asleep she would've found it a bit weird as well.

"Tricky? Wow, must've been quite a night… Are you okay? You're not… hurt or anything, are you?" she asks, her concern wiping a bit of the sleep away.

_I'm broken. Help me. _"I'm fine. Really. Go back to sleep."

She doesn't say anything more, instead draping an arm over his waist and snuggling in closer to her husband.

_Yes. Hold me. So warm. I love you. _He doesn't realize that he's said the last phrase out loud. Which then causes Molly to pull away slightly to look at him in half-concern, half-plain befuddlement.

"You're telling me you love me?"

"Yes. It's true, and I've said it to you multiple times before. I don't see any cause for the surprise written on your face right now."

Molly chuckles, pressing a kiss to his lips and snuggling back in her previous position. Sherlock fights the urge to drag her to the bathroom and wash her lips, the guilt over where his lips had been earlier that night overwhelming. She's made him feel clean, worthy, rid of disgust. He doesn't want to _taint _her.

Her voice pulls him back to the present. "I don't know, you just usually don't let it slip so randomly like that…" she comments, a smile on her lips.

"Not good?"

Her head shakes against his chest, and her swears he could feel her breath warm his insides. "Oh no, very good. I like hearing it. I love you too."

_I don't deserve it. I don't. I love you so much. _"Always?"

He receives a sleepy chuckle in response. "Of course always. What kind of question is that?"

"No matter what?"

She pulls her head back to look at him again, a bit unsettled by his sudden apparent need for some sort of reassurance. Is he doubting her? "Sherlock, is something wrong?"

The question is repeated. "No matter what?"

It's answered with a gentle, slightly drowsy kiss. "No matter what. I love you. Always. No matter what." When it seems to have settled him, she lowers her head to his chest again. "Where did that come from?" she asks curiously.

"What?" he asks, taking a small comfort in her confirmation. _No matter what… Maybe that'll be enough to make her stay._ Idly starting to stroke her hair to lull them both to sleep, his curious mind wonders why he couldn't bring himself to stroke the Woman's hair earlier. He had tugged on it, pulled on it, and it's obviously being better managed than Molly's, judging by how much softer it was, so why had he felt it literally impossible to caress? Molly's hair, while beautiful in its own right, is a tiny bit stiffer, and has quite a few tangles. So why does he feel like he might go crazy every night if he doesn't get to touch it? "Can't a husband ask his wife if she'll love him under any circumstances? I was under the impression that that was what spouses do…"

"Well, you have to admit, you're not usually one for those types of declarations. As I recall, almost two years ago you had warned me that you wouldn't be repeating the phrase _I love you_ nearly as much as other husbands do because, and I quote—" She adapts her best Sherlock-voice. "_I had already vowed to love you for the rest of my life. Saying it repeatedly will not make it more meaningful, just as saying it less with not make it any less true._" A chuckle. "You told me that speech on our anniversary. When I was asking you the way you're asking me now. You do realize I made the same vows you did, right? What makes you think mine will change?" she asks, almost teasingly.

He passes it off with a shrug. "I don't know. Guess I'm feeling particularly sentimental today."

Molly chuckles playfully. "That's odd, you usually feel sentimental after intercourse."

He fights every urge to stiffen, having to take a few moments to ensure that his voice comes out nonchalant. "It's not sex that makes me feel, Molly. It's _you_."

She smiles against his chest, and he continues stroking her hair. It's true. What he has just said is the utmost truth, and he's glad he said it. He wants her to know that. He _needs _her to know that.


End file.
